His Last Prayer
by gossec
Summary: Komui and Tyki. They wait for the world to end.


**Disclaimer**: D. Gray-Man is not mine, sadness to the max.

**Author's Note**: Ok, I lack a word to describe this, is it crack angst/tragedy? The idea for the fic is really tailor-made for another pairing (Seishirou and Subaru from Tokyo Babylon, but that fandom is already too angsty as it is, I'm not gonna contribute to it), and I just can't get Komui and Tyki out of my head for some reason. Christ, 1500+ words on a subject like this, just kill me now. Read and review!

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**His Last Prayer**

By: gossec

* * *

Tyki has a lot more free time lately, so he makes it a habit to visit Komui in his little house in the Ark. He likes the way Komui looks at him, so it irks him a little to find the other man immersed in a pile of thick tomes, courtesy of the Earl.

"What are you reading?" He asks, throwing himself down on the silken couch.

Komui shows him the blank pages.

"Nothing," he says. "He's driving me mad."

Tyki laughs, and doesn't need to ask to know who he's talking about.

Komui flips an empty page.

* * *

The only thing, Tyki thinks, that he'll miss when this world is gone is the food. He'll miss the food, dearly.

When Komui learns of this, he suggests that maybe Tyki should learn how to cook.

Tyki balances and rolls a cigarette on his middle finger and thinks to himself that maybe it's worth a try.

* * *

"Where's Rinali?" Komui asks him.

Tyki looks up from the floor where he's polishing his thick glasses. Komui is halfway through one of the books.

"She's dead," he finally says. "Died a long time ago."

"Oh." Komui murmurs, staring hard at his fingers splayed out on a blank page. "I had forgotten."

Tyki nods and goes back to his glasses.

"Were you the one who killed her?" Komui's voice is a careful blend of danger and timidity.

Tyki sighs. "No."

He wonders why he doesn't tell Komui the truth. Maybe it's because he feels somewhat guilty for the girl's murder, or maybe it's just that he wants to keep talking to Komui. Maybe it's because Komui doesn't really want him to tell the truth, or he doesn't want to tell Komui the truth. Or it's just because he doesn't relish the conversation they'll have if he had been honest. Maybe he's afraid.

None of those reasons are true.

* * *

Tyki walks into Komui's room with red dripping from his sleeves and bloodstains on his boots.

Komui looks up from where he is scribbling in one of the empty books and frowns at him, staring pointedly at the scarlet trail left behind him.

Tyki shrugs. "I'll have an Akuma clean it up."

Because the idea of an Akuma trying to scrub the bloody footprints from a crimson carpet is so funny to him, Komui forgives the Noah and goes back to his work.

Tyki circles behind the other man and leans over his shoulder to get a look at the ink-filled pages, a mess of English and Chinese and whatever language Komui can remember.

"What are you writing?" He asks, mystified and temporarily distracted by the sketch of a bunny in the margins.

"Of how things should be." Komui answers and scribbles out a whole paragraph in what looks to be Russian.

"Oh." Tyki says, then offhandedly. "Is it very different from now?"

Komui pauses in the middle of a sentence and notices the ink stains on his fingers.

"Vastly."

* * *

"Try the cookies." Tyki urges.

Komui complies with a sigh and bites into one of the monstrosities.

"Too hard." He says and thinks that maybe he has cracked one of his teeth on the thing.

Tyki frowns and pushes one of the cookies against the table experimentally. It doesn't break. He sighs and throws the cookie out the open window.

"How about the cake?"

Komui winces, but he picks up the silver knife and carefully cuts himself a small slice.

"Too much sugar."

Tyki leans forward on the table and takes Komui's face in his hands, a dark tongue sliding out and curling around the bit of icing on Komui's lips.

"It tastes alright to me." He murmurs with a smile.

* * *

Komui breaks down in the most spectacular manner. When the eternal sunlight and the unchanging landscape of the Ark get too much for him he finally lets out the shrill screams that has been building up inside of him and tears through the endless supply of the empty books in his study, recognizing them for the taunts they really are.

Tyki always restrains him before he could hurt himself, allowing Komui to scratch and beat against him, hardly feeling the pain at all.

"Where's Rinali?" Komui asks, breaths soft against the hollow of Tyki's throat, then screams, then pushes himself out of Tyki's hard embrace to wander from room to room, a twisted version of hide-and-seek, searching and calling out for a sister who has long left the game.

* * *

Komui's little house has acquired a sort of domesticity at this point, despite being the prison that it still is, and Tyki wonders sometimes about the potted plants lined on the windowsills, basking in the artificial sunlight.

He waters them every time he comes by the house, which is daily now. In fact, he's pretty sure the only reason they are still alive is because of him.

Komui is busy. He is buried in the cluttered mess that is his study, and is in the middle of his second book. The first one lays forgotten, hidden under the loose sheaves of papers.

Tyki fishes it out and thinks that he'll read it, maybe.

"Hey!" Tyki calls out to Komui, and the other man pauses in the middle of one of his epilogues.

"What is it?" Komui sighs, and reaches out for a cup of coffee that isn't there.

"This says that I should've died." Tyki says, pointing to the first page of the first book.

Komui's hand lands on another pen. He blinks at it and continues writing.

"Yes." He mutters, already on a new page, written completely in Hindu. "You should've."

Tyki considers this and shrugs, before flipping the page. It was written in a language he didn't know so he moved onto the next one.

In fact, all he could read is the English.

* * *

"I am a god." Tyki says one day, imperiously.

Komui laughs at him. "I'm an atheist," he says.

Tyki blinks. "When did that happen?"

Komui smiles bitterly and Tyki realizes that he knows when exactly.

* * *

Each page is a new story, a new scenario -completely possible- of how things should have happened.

Tyki reads what he can in complete enthrallment, fascinated with the endless ways he should've died, and wonders if Komui himself has noticed the transition in his writing from how things should be to what things could be.

If this is how the mind of a genius works. If a genius has to make a mistake and regrets and sees the possibilities that exist, that existed, then Tyki is rather glad he's not a genius.

* * *

Tyki tries to teach Komui how to play poker, but the jigsaw pieces of Komui's shattered sanity do not allow for much concentration.

He wins every game anyways, much to Tyki's chagrin and amusement.

"This is stupid." Komui sighs, and puts down a straight flush.

Tyki laughs and gives in to temptation and captures Komui's sulky lips in a gentle kiss.

Komui breaks away and glares. "You are stupid," he accuses.

"Another game." Tyki smiles beatifically.

* * *

Tyki doesn't comment on the white uniform hanging in Komui's bathroom, faded from its many washes but still stained by blood from long ago.

Nor does he comment on the tears on the silvery white cross on the shoulder, knowing that by his next visit, the tears would be mended again.

* * *

Tyki arrives at Komui's house with a new recipe that is supposed to be a family inheritance, or something. He's not exactly sure; its rightful owner is rather dead at the moment.

He finds Komui sleeping on the couch, one hand over his face, hiding it from view. Tyki reaches out with a hand in an attempt to wake the other man.

Two seconds later, before he has even touched Komui, he finds his wrist encircled in a surprisingly tight grip.

"You mustn't try to wake me up." Komui says, one hand still stretched over his face, palm facing upward. "Rinali always said I should rest when I'm tired."

"I want you to try to make this." Tyki whines and pushes the recipe under Komui's nose with his other hand.

Komui sighs and tries to sleep.

* * *

Komui is in the middle of a sentence when he feels a hand curling around his heart.

Tyki leans forward and puts his head on Komui's shoulder, a dark smile twisting his handsome face as he feels the beat of the other man's heart. "Miss me?"

"No," Komui sighs. "You are coming by rather often."

Tyki replies by squeezing harder. Komui gasps and looks at the half-filled page in front of him and wishes that the Noah would either kill him or leave him alone, he rather wants to finish it.

"You are the only one who sees both sides of me." Tyki says, and then regrets it because it sounds rather cliché when said out loud.

"We both should've died." Komui tells him solemnly, and Tyki can't bring himself to disagree.

* * *

"They are building a new Ark." He doesn't tell Komui the reasons behind the decision, or the implications of it.

Komui opens a window and stares out at the sunny landscape, a summery breeze threading through his hair and he shudders at the warmth he feels on his skin. "Good." He says, dreamily.

Tyki puts both hands over Komui's eyes and whispers into his ear. "There is no one alive anymore," he says, "so don't wonder about the real world."

"I'm not," and Komui's eyelashes tickle Tyki's palms.

"You'll never see the real world again," Tyki states, _I won't allow it_. "That's the reality."

"But it's not the truth." Komui laughs.

* * *

Tyki drops through the ceiling and finds himself in the bedroom instead of the study. He blinks and shrugs to himself before walking through the door, then blinks again when he realizes that he is in a dining room and wonders if he has dropped an extra floor.

Then the door opens and Komui shuffles in, wearing a frilly apron and a red cloth tied over his head.

"I'm redecorating." Komui tells him as he drags a box of toys across the room.

* * *

Komui is usually in the study when Tyki comes to visit, usually but not always.

Today Tyki walks into the house and finds Komui in the upstairs bathroom, clutching a pair of scissors and fallen locks of hair all around him.

Tyki eases the scissor out of Komui's hands and starts to trim the rough edges for him.

"Thank you," Komui sighs. "Rinali said that she liked it short."

* * *

Komui is sitting on the floor of the balcony when Tyki walks in. He is clad in his old white uniform and sipping a cup of coffee as he watches the horizon lights up in flames. There is a jagged slash across the sky through which he can see another, much darker and filled with stars.

Komui remembers with a melancholy smile that night existed, and still exists, that it's not always fair weather and sunlight. Buildings are crashing and collapsing like dominoes in the distance with thundering roars that shook the whole Ark.

Tyki sits himself down behind Komui and wraps his arms around the other man. Komui puts the cup down on the floor beside them and his head tilts backward until it rests on Tyki's shoulder, nestled against the Noah's throat.

"I wrote this." He murmurs in calm content, relaxation written in every line of his body.

"Hmmm," Tyki agrees.

They wait for the end together.

_fin

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**Author's Note**: The ending is probably the sweetest thing I've ever written, and that scares me. Remember to review!_  
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